Stealing the Sunlight

‘The Story of the Blue Planet,’ by Andri Snaer Magnason

In most children’s books, from “Little Bear” to “The Jungle Book,” nature exists as a kind of utopia, a lush playground with anthropomorphized animals. It’s rare to find stories that realistically depict the natural world — as a beautiful but fragile realm under siege. Is it because Dr. Seuss so brilliantly impugned the human race’s ecological crimes in “The Lorax” that another masterpiece in the genre has seemed beyond reach? Because our children are so screen-­addicted and nature-starved, we fear ­further exiling them from the outdoors with tales of environmental peril? Or maybe it’s because such stories would expose any grown-up who travels by aircraft or uses Ziploc baggies as an environmental offender. Whatever the reason, eco-lit needs more attention, and devotees will be pleased to discover a new addition from the Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, who writes with a Seussian mix of wonder, wit and gravitas.

“The Story of the Blue Planet” follows Brimir and Hulda, best friends on a small planet that resembles Earth in every way but one: It is inhabited only by children who never grow old. It is a beautiful place where “wind swayed the grass and flowers, while waterfalls tumbled from high mountains” and the children sleep in grassy beds under the stars. It is also filled with lions and tigers and bears, and the kids scavenge fruit, club baby seals for their meat and suckle milk from she-wolves. They enjoy it all. “Each day was so full of danger and excitement that no grown-ups could have lived there without getting gray hair and withering away from stress and worry,” notes the droll narrator. In the tradition of Roald Dahl and Maurice Sendak, Magnason’s story celebrates the ferity and fearlessness of childhood as an idealized state.

But one day a grown-up — the traveling salesman known as Jolly-Goodday — comes crashing down on the blue planet in a spaceship and offers to make the children’s already-fun lives exponentially more so. He sprinkles them with powder vacuumed from the wings of butterflies that, when activated by the sun, gives them the ability to fly. The children are instantly hooked, but become so greedy for flight they agree to Goodday’s planet-altering plan: He nails the sun to the sky and banishes clouds for their 24-hour flying pleasure. For each of these services he extracts his pound of flesh: a drop from the “well of youth in their hearts” that seemed limitless.

As their youth erodes, the children become increasingly divided and competitive. One day during a flying race Brimir and Hulda soar too high and are swept by air currents to the other side of the planet. They discover children are living in everlasting shadow — the plants and trees are shriveled without sun, and everyone will soon die from lack of nourishment. Brimir and Hulda realize that controlling nature for the benefit of a few has imposed a grave cost on the many, and they set out to reverse the harm wrought by Goodday.

Magnason’s writing is lean, swift and often lyrical (owing in part to an impressive translation by Julian Meldon D’Arcy), and for the most part he manages not to be didactic. While the metaphors are not subtle — a reader can easily surmise that the power of flight might stand for video games, that Goodday is doing the equivalent of shilling your Wii, and that the stuck sun and choked rains signify climate change — Magnason generally manages to temper his morality tale with enough wit and levity that it doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Toward the end the author careens into territory that makes the story feel cluttered. He satirizes the flaws of foreign aid (Goodday suggests sending the sickly children on the dark side of the planet packages of food, blankets and shoes), and of democracy.

But the book, over all, is immensely satisfying — a major contribution to the sparsely populated eco-lit genre, and one that could entice other authors to contribute. Magnason’s story touchingly reminds us of the Dahlian principle that adults are “complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets”; and that children “are the music makers . . . the dreamers of dreams.” And further — that these dreamers may also be our best hope of unsticking the sun from the sky, of making the rains fall normally again and of repairing a real-life planet damaged by grown-ups.

THE STORY OF THE BLUE PLANET

By Andri Snaer Magnason

Illustrated by Aslaug Jonsdottir

Translated by Julian Meldon D’Arcy

135 pp. Seven Stories Press. $12.99. (Middle grade; ages 8 to 12)

Amanda Little is the author of “Power Trip: The Story of America’s Love Affair With Energy.” She teaches journalism at Vanderbilt University.

A version of this review appears in print on November 11, 2012, on Page BR37 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Stealing the Sunlight. Today's Paper|Subscribe